What is society to you? I don't mean Websters, I mean personally. Do you feel that society is composed of all of those within the society, or that only a few key players count? I feel that society is made up of every last person in the society. Everyone counts, and everyone has the power to sway the way their neighbors think. Rosa Parks was at the very bottom of the 'food chain' and she made a huge impact. It's people like her who make me believe that anyone can influence the thoughts of others. Opinions?

I do not profess to have have any level of mastery over this area, so we shall see how we go. As I am such a friendly and charming person, I shall try to add some fun (read as fun for me and tediously painful for everyone else) into my post. A nice angle which you have identified in relation to society is differential access to power. To the end of addressing this point, I propose to explore various concepts which demonstrate that in society there are certain groups which enjoy greater access at the expense of others. I almost feel like a young child at a candy store now. Which one should I choose first, roulette go! Well it looks like we have a winner, right off the bat we shall be addressing the concept of social stratification systems!

It is useful to start off with a definition of what exactly a socially stratified society is. For this purpose I turn now to Berreman, Gerald. He provides an understanding which I find to be quite useful.

Originally Posted by G. Berreman

A society is socially stratified when its members are divided into categories which are differentially powerful, esteemed, and rewarded.

From this definition we can readily see that a society which is socially stratified can not be said to be fully including all members. This is further demonstrated when we look at a slightly more expanded description of what a socially stratified society entails.

Originally Posted by D. B. Grusky

The key components of such systems are (a) the institutional processes that define certain types of goods as valuable and desirable; (b) the rules of allocation that distribute these goods across various positions in the division of labor (e.g., doctor, farmer, ‘housewife’); and (c) the mobility mechanisms that link individuals to positions and thereby generate unequal control over valued resources.

Now there are several means in which a society can be socially stratified. This includes, but is not exclusive to, gender stratification, ethnic stratification, and class stratification. While I hold that each of these are serious, I would like to focus more on ethnic stratification. Through addressing the ways in which a society is stratified based on ethnicity, I shall raise a few more of the concepts which I promised you at the start. To start off with, let us take a quick look at the world around us. What you see is that the world is categorized into various different countries (Nation-States). What may seem as an unproblematic observation begins to demonstrate the near inevitability of social stratification when we ask the question, "What exactly is a country?" Far from simply being an area of land which people live in and is differentiated from others, there are certain qualities which a nation-state must have.

Benedict Anderson identified in his concept imagined communities one of the key features of the nation State is presence of a national identity. That is they need to have a culture which unites them as a people while differentiating themselves from the national identities of other nation-states. Unfortunately homogeneous nation-states, to the best of my knowledge quite frankly do not exist. As such there will always be the ever present problem during the process of nation-building whereby certain cultural traits are selected for, while others are selected against in the quest to build a national identity. Through such a process we find that hegemonic groups in society are able to use their privileged status to exert their will. As a direct result this we find that national identities are ethnocentric in nature.

Originally Posted by W. G. Sumner

Ethnocentrism is the technical name for this view of things in which one’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it.

This can be readily identified when one begins to look at aspects such as kinship systems. How should a family be structured? What should a marriage look like? Should it be limited to two people? Or how about the gender of those involved? These questions are cultural in nature, and unavoidably lead to culturally defined answers. However if we have certain groups with hegemonic access, it comes as no surprise that certain answers will be considered more appropriate than others. I believe you are familiar with proposition eight? California take a bow! The problems which come as a result of this interaction between peoples of differing groups has also been identified by Margaret Trawick. Which manages to provide a nice bridge to the final concepts, namely marginalization and the fourth world.

Originally Posted by M. Trawick

Problems arise when people with differing ways of life meet and they do not meet as equals. If one group has the capacity and the desire to dominate the other group, then the first group can make the rules and the second group must obey. Then the first group becomes defined as the centre and the second group becomes defined as part of the margin. To say that the centre defines the margins, therefore, is just to say that there are no people who can be marginal where there are no people who call themselves central, just as there are no slaves where there are no masters. Unfortunately, masters and would-be masters are common among human beings, and so, therefore, are slaves and rebel slaves.

The fourth world, essentially refers to nations which exist within Nation-States against their will. This is commonly associated with the process of colonialism. Whereby States used their power to exert claims over various territory. Territory which already has peoples living there. While the situations of fourth world peoples differ across the globe, there are certain features which remain somewhat constant. As identified before a national identity is central to the Nation-States. For fourth world peoples, they unfortunately find themselves in a position with limited access to the process of nation building. They have also experienced devaluation of their culture. With the State claiming authority over them making varying attempts to remove them of their culture. Often this is made under the false pretense that their culture presents a barrier to 'progress'. Not only have they had to fight to maintain their culture, but also their resources and very lives! While the situation has improved in some nation-states, the problem still very much exists. Much like many other fourth world peoples, Maori in New Zealand find themselves subjected to various forms of subordination and marginalization. These include being referred to as "stone age people" and "savages", to the negative implications which come as a result of their position in society (over-representation in negative statistics). I now turn to my final concept of this post.

Well well well, we are now into the end phase. If you are still waiting for the fun to happen, I am going to have to disappoint you here. There never was any fun planned. So we turn now to the concept of marginalization. Now it is important to note that while fourth world people are by definition marginalized peoples, not all marginalized peoples are fourth world peoples. I turn now to Margaret Trawick. While this may come off as lazy, because well it is. I quite enjoy this piece from her and feel it captures the feeling of my post very nicely.

Originally Posted by M. Trawick

In social scientific thought, marginalized people are not only people who have been enslaved, but also people who have been driven from their homes, who have been robbed of their means of subsistence, whose social order has been shattered, whose language and religion have been outlawed, whose children have been forcibly taken away, and/or whose entire way of life has been destroyed or driven underground by more powerful and aggressive settlers, traders, missionaries, lawmakers, educators, developers and military conquerors. Sometimes the marginalized people are immigrants to a foreign land and sometimes the marginalized peoples are indigenous to an area and their conquerors are the immigrants.

Now marginalized people are by definition people who face more than the usual threats to their living systems. On the most fundamental, physical level, their lives are at much greater risk than the life of a more protected person like you or me, and their spirits are also at risk. Their bodily lives are at risk because they are very often impoverished and malnourished, they do hard and dangerous work, they live in hard and dangerous places, all the world's worst violence from lybching to laser-guided missiles settles at their doorsteps.

But there is more than this threatening the mental integrity of marginalized peoples, for at the same time they are struggling to manage physical hardship, they must also face the severe disorientation that comes with the crumbling of the culture that imparts meaning to their experience, and they must face the depression, frustration and rage that comes with being, in the eyes of the powerful, nobody.

And here I thought this would be a light debate. You've certainly done your homework on this one Fang. But most of what I see up there is that there are to many societies that are cruel and unfair. The people they are cruel and unfair to are still part of the society, they just have to yell louder and risk more to actually change the society.

Originally Posted by Nissa

And here I thought this would be a light debate. You've certainly done your homework on this one Fang. But most of what I see up there is that there are to many societies that are cruel and unfair. The people they are cruel and unfair to are still part of the society, they just have to yell louder and risk more to actually change the society.

It's not that simple. You can look at things that happened in the past and present to understand that protesting against the oppressing powers is often quite dangerous. For example take Iran. Iran's presidential elections were rigged so that one member would stay in power longer. When this happened there was this massive reaction by the public which lead to huge protests and riots. The government did not listen to the people and set the militia on the public. People were shot at, innocent people like Neda Agha-Soltan were shot and killed. People were taken prisoner. It was awful. But is shows how a minority of people in society can oppress the a huge majority of society. In western societies it's rare to seen that sort of extreme, but it still happens in our society on a lesser scale. We all live in society but who is dictating what we do in society and how it is run. Sometimes the powers that be make decisions that we do not agree with, for example look at the current controversy surrounding the health care reform.

Originally Posted by una

It's not that simple. You can look at things that happened in the past and present to understand that protesting against the oppressing powers is often quite dangerous. For example take Iran. Iran's presidential elections were rigged so that one member would stay in power longer. When this happened there was this massive reaction by the public which lead to huge protests and riots. The government did not listen to the people and set the militia on the public. People were shot at, innocent people like Neda Agha-Soltan were shot and killed. People were taken prisoner. It was awful. But is shows how a minority of people in society can oppress the a huge majority of society. In western societies it's rare to seen that sort of extreme, but it still happens in our society on a lesser scale. We all live in society but who is dictating what we do in society and how it is run. Sometimes the powers that be make decisions that we do not agree with, for example look at the current controversy surrounding the health care reform.

I must say, I can't argue with much of that. But I still believe that every person is part of their particular society. Sometimes who they are makes it dangerous, but they can change things. Having just one person change the way we think even a little will change society forever.

Originally Posted by Nissa

I must say, I can't argue with much of that. But I still believe that every person is part of their particular society. Sometimes who they are makes it dangerous, but they can change things. Having just one person change the way we think even a little will change society forever.

What you are saying is right in a very broad sense but there are deeper aspects to it like the political, social and economic relations that exist within society. For example take the under class. The under class comprises of very poor people like deviants, the homeless ect. How does a drug dealer or tramp or a poor illegal immigrant fit into society? There are tons of interesting questions like that which makes this definition of society much deeper... if that makes sense :)

Originally Posted by una

What you are saying is right in a very broad sense but there are deeper aspects to it like the political, social and economic relations that exist within society. For example take the under class. The under class comprises of very poor people like deviants, the homeless ect. How does a drug dealer or tramp or a poor illegal immigrant fit into society? There are tons of interesting questions like that which makes this definition of society much deeper... if that makes sense :)

Society either accepts them or they don't, depending on those within the society. I have a lot of experience with those you have mentioned. I grew up in Huston TX and saw prostitutes, homeless people, etc. all the time. Being in a city, the general population accepted that crime was going to be there and didn't do much in the way of preventing it. When I moved to Ohio at 9, I saw no where near the prostitutes, but there were a lot more drug dealers. People provide services based on what people will pay for. I now live in the Midwest and have never seen a single prostitute, and I could possibly score some pot of I really really looked for it. People here don't want that kind of crap around and will not pay them for their services so they will not set up shop here. And yes, I know that there are a million and one if's and's and but's on my definition of society. My definition is the broadest one. There are more details then I can hammer down on each society on this planet. Broadly, everyone can stand up for what they believe in. If I did it, the worst I could get was a fine if I protested without a license. If someone under a horrible regime did it, they could face being shot after watching their entire family murdered. The devil is always in the details.

Originally Posted by Nissa

And here I thought this would be a light debate. You've certainly done your homework on this one Fang. But most of what I see up there is that there are to many societies that are cruel and unfair. The people they are cruel and unfair to are still part of the society, they just have to yell louder and risk more to actually change the society.

Haha thank you. Politics of identity and issues of marginalization and the dilemma of the fourth world are topics which I am quite interested in. Indeed it was in Dr Sluka's class Endangered Cultures that I was introduced to the world of Anthropology. I mention this both as a point of interest and to try and better acknowledge my own biases and establish the position I enter this discussion from. For Dr Sluka specializes in ethnic conflict, state terror and the struggles of the fourth world. Although this is hardly a sandbox for me to discuss where my positioning lies, and speculate on how various scholars and academics have influenced me. So returning to the topic at hand.

I would like to address a few points which you raised. Firstly apologies for making it seem as if marginalized peoples simply stand back and allow their subordination to take place. It is not through inaction on their part. But rather as Una so rightly identified, through lacking the required capital to do something about it. If we turn to the fourth world we see that this holds true. Far from being passive victims, fourth world peoples have commonly resisted attempts to take their land, resources and lives. Some small scale people have opted to simply avoid contact with large scale societies.

This is the approach which the uncontacted tribes have taken. However I recall Una mentioning in another thread that there are numerous problems worldwide with deforestation. While she was using this angle to argue against capitalism on grounds of environmental damage, we also find it is quite applicable to a discussion on society. For several uncontacted tribes live in and depend on the ecosystems which these forests provide. By their very nature of opting to remain uncontacted they do not have a means of simply raising their voice. This is just one of the problems which they face to, by virtue of existing in space claimed by society while simultaneously existing outside of society. More difficulties they are confronted with can be found on Survival International . This has not always been the course of action taken.

As times such an option has not been readily available to fourth world peoples. For various reasons such as insufficient resources for them to continue evading contact. When pushed into more desperate situations unfortunately they have had to resort to more drastic measures. As I mentioned earlier one of their major difficulties comes from a lack of capital. As such when they get pushed into such desperate situations and take violent action in order to protect their land, resources and very lives, what is it that we find? Quite simply that they are readily labeled as 'terrorists'. As Dr Sluka identified in the book he edited, Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror, 'terrorist' and 'terrorism' are politically charged terms used by nation-states to justify their treatment of fourth world and marginalized peoples. This can be readily identified as he pointed out when you include state terror. Suddenly we are confronted with the reality that a majority of terrorism is state terror, as opposed to anti-state terror. Although the point on the misuse of terrorism provides a nice bridge to where I would like to turn to next.

It is through language that the general public's (mis)understandings are formed. Think for a second if you will of words such as progress, development, or perhaps even tolerance. These all sound like nice words, don't they? Unfortunately much like 'terrorist' and 'terrorism' they are politically charged. Upon closer scrutiny we begin to see them as the cheap smoke and mirror parlor tricks that they are. I turn now to 'progress' and 'development'. As I identified in my earlier post a feature of a nation-state is a national identity. Through the continuous process of said identity being maintained we find certain groups gaining privileged access over this process. Now what does this have to do with 'progress' or 'development'?

Well it is quite unfortunate that despite the tom foolery of nineteenth century evolutionists being dismantled and disproved by Franz Boas and Historical Particularists, their concepts still enjoy far too much authority. I refer specifically to their approach whereby 'progress' and 'development' are pegged to the hegemonic culture. That is the more a culture deviates a way, the less 'developed' that culture gets labeled as. So in a most unfortunate turn of events we find an oppressive system in place which manages to internally justify itself. As peoples who differ from the hegemonic culture are by definition lacking in 'progress' and 'development', any kind hearted and compassionate citizen should support measures to help remedy this. Said remedy is of course the forced imposition of the hegemonic culture upon the peoples identified as lacking 'progress' or 'development'.

Once you identify the ideal course of action to be the imposition of a culture onto a people against their will, you are marginalizing them and treating them as being knowledge-less. This is no different to the marginalization which Trawick identified as being part of the colonial process whereby colonizers

Originally Posted by M. Trawick

changed the identity of the peoples they encountered so these people came to see themselves as well as to be seen by others as inferior, powerless, and knowledgeless.

Although I will return to Trawick at a later point in this post. I turn now instead to a report from Survival international, which I believe is quite adequate. Although I caution that it is lengthy (coming in at about 49 pages). If interested the pdf file can be downloaded here on their official site, or failing that there is an html version which I found here. This report looks at the implications which imposed 'progress' and 'development' have had on various fourth world peoples. Like I identified in my earlier post, what we find is that one of the consequences is they are heavily overrepresented in negative statistics. This can also be reflected in the book Victims of Progress, where J. Bodley explores those lovely concepts have had on fourth world peoples around the world. Although they are not the only concepts which prove to be good smoke and mirror tricks. I now take a slightly different angle and turn to tolerance and its role in the multiculturalism discourse.

When we look at the debate on multiculturalism in the general public we readily observe how simplified it has become. You either fall into the tolerant camp in favour of a multicultural society, or the intolerant camp who oppose it. However this is in itself another smoke and mirror trick, which in reality prevents those not belonging to the hegemonic groups from entering the discussion. G. Hage in his work, White Nation: Fantasies of white supremacy in a multicultural society, explored the role which tolerance plays in keeping marginalized from even entering the discussion. He argues that by its nature, tolerance creates a mindset and environment which justifies and supports the hegemonic group's privileged status in society. After all, what are the basic requirements for tolerance to occur? You need an active agent to be doing the tolerating (the hegemonic group) and you need an object (marginalized group) to be tolerated. Therefore Hage pointed out that by focusing on tolerance as an ideal approach you not only justify the objectification of marginalized peoples, but you also provide the mask which it needs. This is a concept which he discussed in an interview here (transcript is also there for those with slower internet). While he uses recognition in the interview the same principle applies. As he argues a more beneficial approach would be to focus on negotiation. Whereby the parties involved meet on equal terms.

So what I have hopefully demonstrated is that marginalized people are facing an uphill battle. It is not so much a case of them shouting louder. As loud voices achieve little if the person shouting does not enjoy any political power. Indeed without the political capital, shouting can make you look just as special as the Westboro church. Let us be quite frank, nobody wants to be look like them! Much like last time, I find that M. Trawick is quite capable of providing a nice wrap up to my post. She starts off by asking us what the best healing system is? A seemingly simple question is quite apt at identifying the power imbalances that exist between the cultural capital of the hegemonic group and other groups which exist in society. I stress that my point here is to not ask questions about which system of healing is 'best'. But rather to demonstrate how unthinkable it can be to even contemplate putting other cultural perspectives on an equal standing to that which enjoys hegemonic status.

Trawick follows this question by going into a few positions briefly. However as my purpose here is to try and provide an example of power imbalance I do not believe it is necessary for me to include all three angles she identifies. If anyone is interested however, I am more than happy to provide the two I have chosen to not present. I have them prepared already in a word document just in case someone is curious! The position I have chosen should come as no surprise, and by virtue of being in support of the hegemonic system I would venture it is the most widely held one (by this I refer to cultures where it enjoys hegemonic status of course).

Originally Posted by M. Trawick

One point of view says that the best healers are medical doctors – i.e. people who have acquired a high level of comprehension of the extensive scientific knowledge accumulated under the auspices of “modern biomedicine” and who have undergone the long and rigorous scientific training necessary to attain the degree of M.D. According to this point of view, “modern biomedicine” (also called “Western medicine” - a term which has stuck despite the directional meaninglessness for most of the world) is a branch of “science” and “science” is culture free: it is based upon a set of postulates that any rational mind can grasp and assent to, and its empirical successes are testimony to its validity. Other systems of healing may be useful, especially in the treatment of psychic disorders, but “our system” (another name given to it) does not belong in the same category as the others. Others systems of healing are religion; “our system” alone is science. “Our system” may take those others systems as objects of study; it may even incorporate their knowledge and practises into its own, but always it stands above them, as their objective analyst and judge. The word of the doctor, the “medical scientist,” is the final authority when it comes to what is true about the human organism and what works as a mode of healing that organism when it is sick. “Medical science” (another name for it) may not be perfect, but it is the best healing system there is, because it is founded upon fact, not fantasy.

Looking over that post we essentially find what I have been trying to stress. The hegemonic group enjoys such a strangle hold over the capital that it is unthinkable that other cultural groups could even be part of the discussion table, let along be treated as equals. Turning back to my previous post and a quote from M. Trawick, we are reminded that these people so readily dismissed are those

Originally Posted by M. Trawick

who have been driven from their homes, who have been robbed of their means of subsistence, whose social order has been shattered, whose language and religion have been outlawed, whose children have been forcibly taken away, and/or whose entire way of life has been destroyed or driven underground by more powerful and aggressive settlers, traders, missionaries, lawmakers, educators, developers and military conquerors.

The result of this is that they are excluded from fully being part of society. But rather exist in the outer realms. As can be demonstrated with the final quote and conclusion to this post where Trawick quickly compares and contrasts the situation between practitioners of two different healing systems.

Originally Posted by M. Trawick

The practitioner of a non-Western system of healing is likely to be a marginalized person to some degree and to dwell in the interstices between several different worlds, all of which s/he must interact with and all of whose languages s/he must therefore be able to speak, at least a little. The practitioner of a non-Western medical system must be, at the minimum, flexible. The modern biomedical scientist, by contrast, generally lives in only one world and speaks only one language. The modern biomedical scientist occupies a position of great prestige, earns a considerable salary, exercises enormous power and enjoys unchallenged authority.

Yes, I think you've covered it all. I don't think that capital is as big a problem as you think though. I think that coverage of those who do stand up is the biggest issue. We wouldn't know jack about one lady refusing to give up a bus seat if it didn't get all of the attention it did. I think that the press is the biggest influence. Money can not hope to compare to it.

Oh just a clarification, when I was using capital I was referring to political and cultural capital. I was not discussing economic capital. Sorry for the confusion.

Edit: Although I absolutely agree with you on the importance of bringing these struggles to the attention of the general public. Much of the marginalization and subordination I mentioned happens because the mainstream is unaware of it. This is why I absolutely love organizations such as Survival International for all the great they do.